A conversation about race

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What Mike is speaking to that I think a lot of white Americans don't understand, when white folks say, oh, I don't even think of you as black and they think that's a hip, sort of liberal, progressive thing to say instead of understanding the subtext of that comment as in, it's a really damn good thing I don't, because if I did you'd be in trouble.

In other words, it's about saying there's still something wrong with blackness. A lot of the conversation about Senator Obama transcending his race really is about transcending blackness. No white politician is ever asked to transcend race or whiteness. No white politician, who can't even get the votes of 15 percent of black people is ever asked to transcend whiteness because whiteness, you see, isn't something to be transcended, it's something to be aspired to be in a system of white supremacy, whereas blackness is something to graduate from.

We have to get to a day when that's not the case. Colorblindness - not only is Joe Klein wrong, it isn't the point. The point is not to be colorblind. Julian Bond says it best. He says to be blind to color is to be blind to the consequences of color. If color has consequences and people resolve not to notice the thing that is provoking the consequence, then how do we solve the problem? We don't.

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WILLIAMS: Tom. You wanted in on this.

JOYNER: I think there's something that's missing here and it's something that I didn't see in your film, David Wilson, was an apology and if we're going to try to fix this problem of race, it has to start first with an apology.

COMPTON-ROCK: I disagree. I disagree because ...

JOYNER: Apology for the system that brought us here and enslaved us. Slavery was a Holocaust.

COMPTON-ROCK: It was a Holocaust and I think it should be talked about like that just like the Holocaust is.

JOYNER: And we can't go to the next step and the step beyond and the step beyond and honestly solve the problems of race until we start with an apology and we have never gotten that.

WILLIAMS: Were you unaffected by the wisdom of Daisy at age 97 who looked at David and said, you know, that was in the past and I found her view, for all of 97, very in the present, here and now, forward thinking. You're saying that the conversation can't advance ...

JOYNER: Until we start with an apology. And I didn't see that and you asked him about reparations but you didn't ask him, do you apologize?

WILLIAMS: Who did it come from and what did Bill Clinton do during his presidency.

DYSON: Bill Clinton did talk about on African soil issuing an apology for slavery but what's interesting about the apology is that it gets into what Brother Barnicle said which is about the personal. In other words that we can have intimate relationships and you talk about the difference between the South and the North. The seductive character of that is to believe that interactions with individuals will change.

But we're talking about individuals, and institutional mechanisms.

So even though, I think what Tom's point is this. We live in the United States of amnesia. We're addicted to forgetfulness. So we don't want - if you have an argument with your wife and y'all get into it and you get home and act like ain't nothing happened and everything is cool, first of all you might be in the wrong room, not the bedroom but the couch. But secondly, you have a kind of accumulated tension. Not only do you not apologize, you keep on going on as if things are fine and you refuse to engage it.

But I think this is important, too. The structure is important. Dubois, to bring him into this conversation again, said, it's not simply about educating people about social difference and racial difference, it's also about engaging the structural differences. When Brother Wilson asked the question, what's wrong with black America and Brother

Tim said nothing that the end of racism won't solve, the question is how- many white Americans can't get enough Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, the past. It is ever with us. Obsessed with it. John Adams...

WILLIAMS: On HBO.

DYSON: But when it comes to African American people, get over that. No, we don't want to get over the Declaration of Independence, we don't want to get over the Constitution, we don't want to get over the Bill of Rights. You can't even deal with the president without being predicate (ph) of the past. Talking (ph) said the past ain't even past.

So the reality is how do we acknowledge consciously the centrality of the past, argue with that past, deal with that past, and then go over that obstacle that is there like the 800 pound elephant in the room. That's what we've got to do.

WILLIAMS: Malaak, you were saying, "No," when Tom talked about an apology.

COMPTON-ROCK: You know I'm of the feeling of Daisy. I think what she said was brilliant. I worked in an area of Brooklyn called Bushwick with all the crime rates, all the poverty rates, all the single parent, lot of drug addiction that David talked about happening in Newark.

And I worked with children who have to come to the Salvation Army Bushwick Center for food, for tutoring because they would be latchkey kids, to keep them off the street. And I am in a position right now where I'm working to update a computer lab and update a library, which shouldn't be called a library because there's no books and put in an art room against a system that will fund midnight basketball going till midnight but the computer lab which is outdated can only stay open from 3:00 till 6:00.

So for me, my reparations, keep the computer lab open from 3:00 p.m. till midnight. Allow the boys to play basketball if that's what they want to do but so many of them can do more and are not given the opportunity. So I don't think we need an apology. I think that we need our government and we need to put money and resources into our children.

BARNICLE: I've got to tell you, my wife and I, we're the parents of seven children. OK? And they're all comfortable and six out of seven are in good shape and I play the odds, OK, with regard to kids.

If I were a black parent in this country I would want an apology. But I would want the apology for the failure, systemic failure of the educational system in this country in urban America. I would want an apology for the political system in this country that through the best of intentions in the mid 1960s created a client state of African Americans dependent on their vote automatic, they're going to come to the polls, two years, four years, let's up the food stamp appropriation, let's do this, let's up the welfare appropriation.

But never, never really concentrating on the foundation of the issue, one of the foundations of the issue. Public education in this country, it's a disgrace.

WILLIAMS: On that point, as we change topics tonight, you'll see guests come and go, we're going to take a break, and when we come back, it is 60 seconds of videotape. It is what you heard referenced earlier. It's the doll test. It's hard to watch but it should be part of the conversation we're having tonight here at Howard University in Washington.

We'll continue right after this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And why is that doll pretty?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because she's white and she has two eyes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Which doll is the ugly doll? Why is that doll ugly?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because he's black.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CONTINUED

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